User: CuriousXYZ

psycjen, no problem. I too have been very busy. I check in every week or two.

psygen, was away longer than expected. It was tax time in the U.S. and that took longer than expected.

(1) Re polls like Misterpoll and LikeLike: As you say, these polls are not scientific. The people taking the poll are not randomly selected. I'm sure many poll takers pretend to be members of the opposite sex. In those polls that address some questions to males and females separately, I suspect some poll takers answer both as male and female. I also suspect some poll takers take the polls more than once. Often the questions are worded in a slanted way. Often the choices of answers do not cover the range of realistic alternatives. The fact is, I hardly ever look at the poll results. I am more interested in the comments. Many of the comments are worthless -- especially if the subject even remotely has anything to do with sex. A number of people obviously use these polls to play out their fantasies. I ignore these. However, ever now and then someone says something intelligently that presents a viewpoint new to me, presents a fact or some facts that I was not aware of, says something especially well, or refers to some interesting source. Of course, one has to be careful not to take too much time on this kind of thing.

(2) Re the "primitive" state of the behavioral and social sciences: Struck a nerve, did I? :-) Prediction is a very important aspect of any discipline that would call itself a science, though perhaps not necessarily essential. The ability to predict leads to being able to control, but not in all cases, e.g., astronomy! So I think that it is good thing that the behavioral and social sciences do not have the predictive power of the natural sciences.

A major problem for the behavioral and social sciences, much more so than the natural sciences, is "political correctness" (climate study perhaps is influenced by political correctness more than any other natural science. It is difficult to get funding for research that offends political correctness. If you should get it, you might not be able to publish it. If you do get it published, all those afraid of offending polical correctness (which would almost everyone in the field), will cast stones at your work (and you). Moreover, no one is likely to try to do research that confirms your results. Your ideas may be tremendously important, but they die (until maybe the content of political correctness changes).

It seems to me that the fundamental issue for the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and psychology is "What is human nature?" Part of the answer to this question would be determining what is due to nature and what to socialization. Some social scientists deny there there is such a thing as human nature. I would ask, "If that is so--if the object of your study has no uniformity or constancy, how can there possibly be a real science of humans?" All you would have is a collection of maybe interesting facts of limited usefulness.

An approach to the behavioral and social sciences that I thought held promise was that of Bernard Berelson and Gary Steiner. (Search "Bernard Berelson" on Wikipedia; check out this website for a review of his book Human Behavior: An Inventory of Scientific Findings: http://suppes-corpus.stanford.edu/article.html?id=83-1) Unfortunately, no behavioral or social scientists seem to have carried on with Berelson and Steiner's idea. If they ever do, then the findings would of course now be put in a computer database for easier retrieval and more powerful relating.

(3) Re feminism, female supremacy, matriarchy and BDSM: The link for me for BDSM was not from feminism but from female supremacy. Matriachy (my prime interest) and female supremacy are related but not identical. There can be matriarchy without female supremacy but there cannot be female supremacy without matriachy. Female supremacy need not entail BDSM practices but I suspect the majority of self-styled female supremacists are into BDSM. (Google: Sharaheve, Woman Thou Art God, Loving Female Authority, Female Led Relationships). For me the best use of the term "feminism" is egaliltarian feminism which is incompatible with female supremacy. What started my research was an ariticle called "the Coming American Matriarchy." You may want to google it and also a more recent article "The End of Men" published in the Atlantic Monthly.

(4) Re the "Coming American Matriarchy": There seem to be changes in gender roles in the U.S., U.K., and other great democracies that IF the trends continue could result in the greatest social revolution in human history. I would think that young budding social scientists would take an interest. In the U.S., 3 women graduate from college for every 2 men. For many years now, women in the U.S. have earned a majority of the master's degrees. They are now getting a majority of Ph.Ds. (in all fields but math, physics, computer science, and engineering). I expect they will become the majority of graduating lawyers and M.D.'s. In 2008 or 2009, the average woman in the U.S. for the first time had more education than the average man. With the current gap in gender graduation rates, this overall gap will only increase. Education of course is the road to power. Young women in the U.S., in their twenties in the twenty largest cities in the U.S. are making more money than their male peers. Project this forward and in about five decades, women in all age groups will earn more than their male peers. It seems also that young women are getting more managerial jobs. In the U.S., in 2009, the number of working females exceeded the number of working males for the first time in U.S. economic history (due to our recession). More and more, wives earn more than their husbands. Well . . ., and so on. You can take it from there. If trends continue, it is reasonable to predict that in the U.S., the average woman will be better educated than the average male (already the case), have a more authoritative job, and make more money. Most men will work for a woman. It may happen that the wife typically will be the breadwinner in the family. The U.K. seems to further in this direction than the U.S., but these trends seem to be happening in all of the developed nations. The question, however, is "Will all of these trends continue?" If they do, women in the U.S. could hold more power than men in education (arguably already the case), in business, in the professions, and in government. By definition, that would be a matriarchy. Hence, my interest in matriarchy. If one hypotesizes a matriarchy, then the question arise of the role of men in it, which leads to the question of whether or not women will try to oppress men as men oppressed women. This of course is the issue of female supremacy.

(5) You may interested to know that there is a blog that I have been commenting on under the nom de plume of "Rusty." It that of Lucy83 on hubpages. com (as far as I can tell a "hub" is simply an article that is part of someone's blog). I have commented in the following hubs belonging to Lucy83: http://hubpages.com/hub/Female-Supremacy and http://hubpages.com/hub/Matriarchy. I am now planning a comment concerning the natural gynocentrism of feminist groups and its implications. I've been thinking of submitting it to the matriarchy hub, but might submit it to the female supremacy hub. There are related hubs. Comments on the hubs are controlled by the hub owner, who can prevent a lot junk like you find on likelike.com from appearing; thus, improving the quality of the comments that do appear.

psycgen, will be away for a few days. Will get back to you in 4 or 5 days.

psygen,

First of all, thank you for getting back to me. When one surfs the internet, one winds up in unsought places. I developed an interest in the implications of women in the U.S. graduating from college about 3 for every 2 men. That led, among other things, considerations of "the coming American Matriarchy" and that to feminism and female supremacy and the latter to BDSM stuff. Somewhere along the way I hit this poll in misterpoll.com. In your first comment you showed an interest in male arousal and seemed to associate it solely with male victory.

Re your first reply to me: (1) I know that many people say that "in theory" sociology reduces to psychology, which reduces to biology, which reduces to chemistry, which reduces to physics. By "reduces to" I mean "is explained by the principles of." However, I am not so sure about this reductionism. I think that at higher orders of complexity explanation might only be within the principles of that complexity. This might be because higher orders of complexity create non-reducible higher order principles. Or, it might be because we do not and never will understand all the principles of nature. In any case, I do not thnk the phenomena of men becoming aroused when defeated by women can be explained by junk food or being overweight. This, of course, is just a hunch. There is the possiblity, too, that even if these factors were causative, they might not fully explain the phenoma at issue. In the final analysis, the issue is an empirical one that can only be settled by empirical means such as correlating types of food consumed, presence of hormones, or Body Mass Index with the male feelings of submission that I described and are in evidence in the comments in the likelike.com poll I cited . There are plenty of other polls there and on misterpoll.com that contain the same kind of comments. Also, one can find similar comments on youtube.com (search on "mixed wrestling," girls beat boys," and the like. More disturbing, search on "ballbusting" where guys say that they want girls to kick them in the balls.) In the absence of a consensus by the scientific community on these matters, all else is speculation.

(2) You mentioned maschocism. I refreshed my understanding of that on Wikipedia.com (not exactly the most authoritative source but not to be discounted either and certainly readily available and quick). I am not sure that males becoming aroused by being bested by women (or even thinking about it or hearing about it) constitutes a case of mascochism. Certainly, it seems related. But I am not sure that the men being aroused actively seek it or even really enjoy it. All we have here is self-reporting by a very few men and that is not very reliable. Certainly, not enough is known from that source to make a conclusion.

(3) I think that your "play" with Brad does not explain much, since it occurs within a context in which both of you surely have no genuine feelings of defeat or really being dominated. Many women like the "woman on top" positiion because they like the feeling of control and many men enjoy letting their women enjoying themselves. It is not real love if you do not desire the happiness of the person you love. Something tells me that his arousal largely stems from the sight of you nude, near him, and even in physical contact with him, although other factors might enhance or speed that arousal.

(4) It does not surprise me that you were not able to find anything on this issue. Compared to the natural sciences, I think that the behaviourial and social sciences are primitive. Sorry about that. :-} Of course, the objects studied in the natural sciences do not have the free will and imagination of humans. That makes the establishing a consensus on scientific "laws" more difficutlt. Say I want to know how fast an object falls where air friction is negligible. I just look up the formula. But it is not just laws but consensus on facts that are hard to come by in the social sciences.

(5) My hunch is that few men are aroused by "defeat" of male by female. I base my hunch on (a) the small number of people commenting on likelike.com, misterpoll.com, and youtube.com and self-reporting of arousal by "defeat" of male by female, (b) the scant mention of the phenomena in mass media, and of course (c) your not coming up with anything.

If interested, you might check out the Wikipedia article on "Female Submission" and see what you make of it. According to it, "A 1995 study indicates that 89% of heterosexual females who are active in BDSM expressed a preference for a submissive-recipient role in sexual bondage, suggesting also a preference for a dominant male, and 71% of heterosexual males preferred a dominant-initiator role."

psycien, you seem to be interested in the sexual behavior of the human male and as a psychology major you have resources the average doesn't. Some boys and men get erections when they are defeated by females or even if they think about. It doesn't have to be phyiscal defeat. It can be psychological defeat. What percentage of guys become aroused in this way? 5%? 25%? 50%? 75%? 95%? And why? Even the guys to whom it happens don't understand why. As a psychology major, can you shed some light on this matter? Please take a look at the comments in this poll on likelike.com: http://www.likelike.com/poll/2258. I'm curious.